Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Well, it's still pretty hot in Silver City. A high of ninety-three today says the weather report. Let me try that again: today the weather report says the high is ninety-three. Subject verb object. Of course it's a little bit hotter than that in the sun, or standing next to or inside of a big piece of sheet metal. Survival seems harder out there and the bugs are more aggressive. The lizards have it pretty good. Over the weekend D and I went to white sands for a night, camping on the dunes. For the first time in my life I'm able to identify more than just the big dipper and Orion. The night sky is full of objects now. Lots of sky here that isn't obscured by trees or light. "Light pollution" as my dad called it. In the meantime I've been rereading the Cormac McCarthy book "The Crossing" which takes place, or starts, right around here:

She wandered the eastern slope of the Sierra del Madera for a week. Her ancestors had hunted camels and primitive toy horses on these grounds. She found little to eat. Most of the game was slaughtered out of the country. Most of the forest cut to feed the boilers of the stampmills at the mines. The wolves in that country had been killing cattle for a long time but the ignorance of the animals was a puzzle to them. The cows bellowing and bleeding and stumbling through the mountain meadows with their shovel feet and their confusion, bawling and floundering through the fences and dragging post and wires behind. The ranchers said they brutalized the cattle in a way they did not the wild game. As if the cows evoked in them some anger. As if they were offended by some violation of an old order. Old ceremonies. Old Protocols.